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AN INTRODUCTION TO THE

HISTORY OF WESTERN EUROPE

PART 1

BY

JAMES HARVEY ROBINSON

PROFESSOR OF HISTORY IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

History is no easy science;

its subject, human society,

is infinitely complex.

FUSTEL DE COULANGES

GINN & COMPANY

BOSTON · NEW YORK · CHICAGO · LONDON

ENTERED AT STATIONERS' HALL

COPYRIGHT, 1902, 1903

BY JAMES HARVEY ROBINSON

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

612.1

The Athenæum Press

GINN & COMPANY · PROPRIETORS ·

BOSTON · U.S.A.

PREFACE

IN introducing the student to the history of the development of European culture,

the problem of proportion has seemed to me, throughout, the fundamental one.

Consequently I have endeavored not only to state matters truly and clearly but also to

bring the narrative into harmony with the most recent conceptions of the relative

importance of past events and institutions. It has seemed best, in an elementary

treatise upon so vast a theme, to omit the names of many personages and conflicts of

secondary importance which have ordinarily found their way into our historical text￾books. I have ventured also to neglect a considerable number of episodes and

anecdotes which, while hallowed by assiduous repetition, appear to owe their place in

our manuals rather to accident or mere tradition than to any profound meaning for the

student of the subject.

The space saved by these omissions has been used for three main purposes.

Institutions under which Europe has lived for centuries, above all the Church, have

been discussed with a good deal more fullness than is usual in similar manuals. The

life and work of a few men of indubitably first-rate importance in the various fields of

human endeavor—Gregory the Great, Charlemagne, Abelard, St. Francis, Petrarch,

Luther, Erasmus, Voltaire, Napoleon, Bismarck—have been treated with care

proportionate to their significance for the world. Lastly, the scope of the work has

been broadened so that not only the political but also the economic, intellectual, and

artistic achievements of the past form an integral part of the narrative.

I have relied upon a great variety of sources belonging to the various orders in the

hierarchy of historical literature; it is happily unnecessary to catalogue these. In some

instances I have found other manuals, dealing with portions of my field, of value. In

the earlier chapters, Emerton's admirable Introduction to the Middle Ages furnished

many suggestions. For later periods, the same may be said of Henderson's

careful Germany in the Middle Ages and Schwill's clear and well-proportionedHistory

of Modern Europe. For the most recent period, I have made constant use of Andrews'

scholarly Development of Modern Europe. For England, the manuals of Green and

Gardiner have been used. The greater part of the work is, however, the outcome of

study of a wide range of standard special treatises dealing with some short period or

with a particular phase of European progress. As examples of these, I will mention

only Lea's monumental contributions to our knowledge of the jurisprudence of the

Church, Rashdall's History of the Universities in the Middle Ages, Richter's

incomparable Annalen der Deutschen Geschichte im Mittelalter, the Histoire

Générale, and the well-known works of Luchaire, Voigt, Hefele, Bezold, Janssen,

Levasseur, Creighton, Pastor. In some cases, as in the opening of the Renaissance, the

Lutheran Revolt, and the French Revolution, I have been able to form my opinions to

some extent from first-hand material.

My friends and colleagues have exhibited a generous interest in my enterprise, of

which I have taken constant advantage. Professor E.H. Castle of Teachers College,

Miss Ellen S. Davison, Dr. William R. Shepherd, and Dr. James T. Shotwell of the

historical department of Columbia University, have very kindly read part of my

manuscript. The proof has been revised by my colleague, Professor William A.

Dunning, Professor Edward P. Cheyney of the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Ernest

F. Henderson, and by Professor Dana C. Munro of the University of Wisconsin. To all

of these I am much indebted. Both in the arduous preparation of the manuscript and in

the reading of the proof my wife has been my constant companion, and to her the

volume owes innumerable rectifications in arrangement and diction. I would also add

a word of gratitude to my publishers for their hearty coöperation in their important

part of the undertaking.

The Readings in European History, a manual now in preparation, and designed to

accompany this volume, will contain comprehensive bibliographies for each chapter

and a selection of illustrative material, which it is hoped will enable the teacher and

pupil to broaden and vivify their knowledge. In the present volume I have given only a

few titles at the end of some of the chapters, and in the footnotes I mention, for

collateral reading, under the heading "Reference," chapters in the best available books,

to which the student may be sent for additional detail. Almost all the books referred to

might properly find a place in every high-school library.

J.H.R.

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY,

January 12, 1903.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I THE HISTORICAL POINT OF VIEW 1

II WESTERN EUROPE BEFORE THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS 8

III

THE GERMAN INVASIONS AND THE BREAK-UP OF THE

ROMAN EMPIRE

25

IV THE RISE OF THE PAPACY 44

V THE MONKS AND THE CONVERSION OF THE GERMANS 56

VI CHARLES MARTEL AND PIPPIN 67

VII CHARLEMAGNE 77

VIII THE DISRUPTION OF CHARLEMAGNE'S EMPIRE 92

IX FEUDALISM 104

X THE DEVELOPMENT OF FRANCE 120

XI ENGLAND IN THE MIDDLE AGES 133

XII

GERMANY AND ITALY IN THE TENTH AND ELEVENTH

CENTURIES

148

XIII THE CONFLICT BETWEEN GREGORY VII AND HENRY IV 164

XIV THE HOHENSTAUFEN EMPERORS AND THE POPES 173

XV THE CRUSADES 187

XVI THE MEDIÆVAL CHURCH AT ITS HEIGHT 201

XVII HERESY AND THE FRIARS 216

XVIII THE PEOPLE IN COUNTRY AND TOWN 233

XIX THE CULTURE OF THE MIDDLE AGES 250

XX THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR 277

XXI THE POPES AND THE COUNCILS 303

XXII THE ITALIAN CITIES AND THE RENAISSANCE 321

XXIII EUROPE AT THE OPENING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 354

XXIV GERMANY BEFORE THE PROTESTANT REVOLT 369

XXV

MARTIN LUTHER AND HIS REVOLT AGAINST THE

CHURCH

387

XXVI

COURSE OF THE PROTESTANT REVOLT IN GERMANY,

1521–1555

405

XXVII

THE PROTESTANT REVOLT IN SWITZERLAND AND

ENGLAND

421

XXVIII THE CATHOLIC REFORMATION—PHILIP II 437

XXIX THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR 465

XXX

STRUGGLE IN ENGLAND FOR CONSTITUTIONAL

GOVERNMENT

475

XXXI THE ASCENDENCY OF FRANCE UNDER LOUIS XIV 495

XXXII RISE OF RUSSIA AND PRUSSIA 509

XXXIII THE EXPANSION OF ENGLAND 523

XXXIV THE EVE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 537

XXXV THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 558

XXXVI THE FIRST FRENCH REPUBLIC 574

XXXVII NAPOLEON BONAPARTE 592

XXXVIII EUROPE AND NAPOLEON 606

XXXIX EUROPE AFTER THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA 625

XL THE UNIFICATION OF ITALY AND GERMANY 642

XLI EUROPE OF TO-DAY 671

LIST OF BOOKS 689

INDEX 691

LIST OF MAPS

PAGE

1 The Roman Empire at its Greatest Extent 8–9

2 The Barbarian Inroads 26–27

3 Europe in the Time of Theodoric 31

4 The Dominions of the Franks under the Merovingians 37

5 Christian Missions 63

6 Arabic Conquests 71

7 The Empire of Charlemagne 82–83

8 Treaty of Verdun 93

9 Treaty of Mersen 95

10 Fiefs and Suzerains of the Counts of Champagne 113

11 France at the Close of the Reign of Philip Augustus 129

12 The Plantagenet Possessions in England and France 141

13 Europe about A.D. 1000 152–153

14 Italian Towns in the Twelfth Century 175

15 Routes of the Crusaders 190–191

16 The Crusaders' States in Syria 193

17 Ecclesiastical Map of France in the Middle Ages 205

18 Lines of Trade and Mediæval Towns 242–243

19 The British Isles 278–279

20 Treaty of Bretigny, 1360 287

21 French Possessions of the English King in 1424 294

22 France under Louis XI 298–299

23 Voyages of Discovery 349

24 Europe in the Sixteenth Century 358–359

25 Germany in the Sixteenth Century 372–373

26 The Swiss Confederation 422

27 Treaty of Utrecht 506–507

28 Northeastern Europe in the Eighteenth Century 513

29 Provinces of France in the Eighteenth Century 539

30 Salt Tax in France 541

31 France in Departments 568–569

32 Partitions of Poland 584

33 Europe at the Height of Napoleon's Power 614–615

34 Europe in 1815 626–627

35 Races of Austro-Hungary 649

36 Europe of To-day 666–667

FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS

I PAGE FROM AN ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPT Frontispiece

II FAÇADE OF RHEIMS CATHEDRAL

Facing

page

264

III INTERIOR OF EXETER CATHEDRAL

Facing

page

266

IV

BRONZE STATUES OF PHILIP THE GOOD AND

CHARLES THE BOLD AT INNSBRUCK

Facing

page

300

V

VI

BRONZE DOORS OF THE CATHEDRAL AT PISA

GHIBERTI'S DOORS AT FLORENCE

}

342–343

VII

VIII

GIOTTO'S MADONNA

HOLY FAMILY BY ANDREA DEL SARTO

}

346–347

[Pg 1]

INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF WESTERN EUROPE

CHAPTER I

THE HISTORICAL POINT OF VIEW

The scope of history.

1. History, in the broadest sense of the word, is all that we know about everything

that man has ever done, or thought, or hoped, or felt. It is the limitless science of past

human affairs, a subject immeasurably vast and important but exceedingly vague. The

historian may busy himself deciphering hieroglyphics on an Egyptian obelisk,

describing a mediæval monastery, enumerating the Mongol emperors of Hindustan or

the battles of Napoleon. He may explain how the Roman Empire was conquered by

the German barbarians, or why the United States and Spain came to blows in 1898, or

what Calvin thought of Luther, or what a French peasant had to eat in the eighteenth

century. We can know something of each of these matters if we choose to examine the

evidence which still exists; they all help to make up history.

Object of this volume.

The present volume deals with a small but very important portion of the history of

the world. Its object is to give as adequate an account as is possible in one volume of

the chief changes in western Europe since the German barbarians overcame the armies

of the Roman Empire and set up states of their own, out of which the present countries

of France, Germany, Italy, Austria, Spain, the Netherlands, and England[Pg 2] have

slowly grown. There are, however, whole libraries upon the history of each of these

countries during the last fifteen hundred years, and it requires a volume or two to give

a tolerably complete account of any single important person, like St. Francis,

Cromwell, Frederick the Great, or Napoleon. Besides biographies and general

histories, there are many special treatises upon the Church and other great institutions;

upon the literature, art, philosophy, and law of the various countries. It is obvious,

therefore, that only a very few of the historical facts known to scholars can possibly

find a place in a single volume such as this. One who undertakes to condense what we

know of Europe's past, since the times of Theodosius and Alaric, into the space of six

hundred pages assumes a very grave responsibility. The reader has a right to ask not

only that what he finds in the book shall be at once true and clearly stated, but that it

shall consist, on the whole, of the most important and useful of all the things which

might have been selected from the well-nigh infinite mass of true things that are

known.

We gain practically nothing from the mere enumeration of events and dates. The

student of history wishes to know how people lived; what were their institutions

(which are really only the habits of nations), their occupations, interests, and

achievements; how business was transacted in the Middle Ages almost without the aid

of money; how, later, commerce increased and industry grew up; what a great part the

Christian church played in society; how the monks lived and what they did for

mankind. In short, the object of an introduction to mediæval and modern European

history is the description of the most significant achievements of western civilization

during the past fifteen hundred years,—the explanation of how the Roman Empire of

the West and the wild and unknown districts inhabited by the German races have

become the Europe of Gladstone and Bismarck, of Darwin and Pasteur.

[Pg 3]

In order to present even an outline of the great changes during this long period, all

that was exceptional and abnormal must be left out. We must fix our attention upon

man's habitual conduct, upon those things that he kept on doing in essentially the same

way for a century or so. Particular events are important in so far as they illustrate these

permanent conditions and explain how the western world passed from one state to

another.

We should study the past sympathetically.

We must learn, above all, to study sympathetically institutions and beliefs that we

are tempted at first to declare absurd and unreasonable. The aim of the historian is not

to prove that a particular way of doing a thing is right or wrong, as, for instance,

intrusting the whole government to a king or forbidding clergymen to marry. His

object is to show as well as he can how a certain system came to be introduced, what

was thought of it, how it worked, and how another plan gradually supplanted it. It

seems to us horrible that a man should be burned alive because he holds views of

Christianity different from those of his neighbors. Instead, however, of merely

condemning the practice, we must, as historical students, endeavor to see why

practically every one in the thirteenth century, even the wisest and most tender￾hearted, agreed that such a fearful punishment was the appropriate one for a heretic.

An effort has, therefore, been made throughout this volume to treat the convictions

and habits of men and nations in the past with consideration; that is, to make them

seem natural and to show their beneficent rather than their evil aspects. It is not the

weakness of an institution, but the good that is in it, that leads men to adopt and retain

it.

Impossibility of dividing the past into clearly defined periods.

All general changes take place gradually.

2. It is impossible to divide the past into distinct, clearly defined periods and prove

that one age ended and another began in a particular year, such as 476, or 1453, or

1789. Men do not and cannot change their habits and ways of doing things all at once,

no matter what happens. It is true[Pg 4] that a single event, such as an important battle

which results in the loss of a nation's independence, may produce an abrupt change in

the government. This in turn may encourage or discourage commerce and industry

and modify the language and the spirit of a people. Yet these deeper changes take

place only very gradually. After a battle or a revolution the farmer will sow and reap

in his old way, the artisan will take up his familiar tasks, and the merchant his buying

and selling. The scholar will study and write and the household go on under the new

government just as they did under the old. So a change in government affects the

habits of a people but slowly in any case, and it may leave them quite unaltered.

The French Revolution, at the end of the eighteenth century, was probably the most

abrupt and thoroughgoing change in the habits of a nation of which we have any

record. But we shall find, when we come to study it, that it was by no means so

sudden in reality as is ordinarily supposed. Moreover, the innovators did not even

succeed in permanently altering the form of government; for when the French, after

living under a monarchy for many centuries, set up a republic in 1792, the new

government lasted only a few years. The nation was monarchical by habit and soon

gladly accepted the rule of Napoleon, which was more despotic than that of any of its

former kings. In reorganizing the state he borrowed much from the discarded

monarchy, and the present French republic still retains many of these arrangements.

The unity or continuity of history.

This tendency of mankind to do, in general, this year what it did last, in spite of

changes in some one department of life,—such as substituting a president for a king,

traveling by rail instead of on horseback, or getting the news from a newspaper

instead of from a neighbor,—results in what is called the unity orcontinuity of history.

The truth that no abrupt change has ever taken place in all the customs of a people,

and that it[Pg 5] cannot, in the nature of things, take place, is perhaps the most

fundamental lesson that history teaches.

Historians sometimes seem to forget this principle, when they claim to begin and

end their books at precise dates. We find histories of Europe from 476 to 918, from

1270 to 1492, as if the accession of a capable German king in 918, or the death of a

famous French king in 1270, or the discovery of America, marked a general change in

European affairs. In reality, however, no general change took place at these dates or in

any other single year. It would doubtless have proved a great convenience to the

readers and writers of history if the world had agreed to carry out a definite

programme and alter its habits at precise dates, preferably at the opening of each

century. But no such agreement has ever been adopted, and the historical student must

take things as he finds them. He must recognize that nations retain their old customs

while they adopt new ones, and that a portion of a nation may advance while a great

part of it stays behind.

Meaning of the term 'Middle Ages.'

3. We cannot, therefore, hope to fix any year or event which may properly be taken

as the beginning of that long period which followed the downfall of the Roman state

in western Europe and which is commonly called the Middle Ages. Beyond the

northern and western boundaries of the Roman Empire, which embraced the whole

civilized world from the Euphrates to Britain, mysterious peoples moved about whose

history before they came into occasional contact with the Romans is practically

unknown. These Germans, or barbarians, as the Romans called them, were destined to

put an end to the Roman Empire in the West. They had first begun to make trouble

about a hundred years before Christ, when a great army of them was defeated by the

Roman general, Marius. Julius Cæsar narrates, in polished Latin, familiar to all who

have begun the study of that language, how fifty years later he drove back other

bands. Five hundred years elapsed,[Pg 6] however, between these first encounters and

the founding of German kingdoms within the boundaries of the Empire. With their

establishment the Roman government in western Europe may be said to have come to

an end and the Middle Ages to have begun.

Yet it would be a great mistake to suppose that this means that the Roman

civilization suddenly disappeared at this time. As we shall see, it had gradually

changed during the centuries following the golden age of Augustus, who died A.D. 14.

Long before the German conquest, art and literature had begun to decline toward the

level that they reached in the Middle Ages. Many of the ideas and conditions which

prevailed after the coming of the barbarians were common enough before,—even the

ignorance and want of taste which we associate particularly with the Middle Ages.

The term Middle Ages is, then, a vague one. It will be used in this volume to mean,

roughly speaking, the period of nearly a thousand years that elapsed between the

opening of the fifth century, when the disorder of the barbarian invasions was

becoming general, and the fourteenth century, when Europe was well on its way to

retrieve all that had been lost since the break-up of the Roman Empire.

The 'dark ages.'

It used to be assumed, when there was much less interest in the period than there

now is, that with the disruption of the Empire and the disorder that followed,

practically all culture perished for centuries, that Europe entered upon the "dark ages."

These were represented as dreary centuries of ignorance and violence in marked

contrast to the civilization of the Greeks and Romans on the one hand, and to the

enlightenment of modern times on the other. The more careful studies of the last half

century have made it clear that the Middle Ages were not "dark" in the sense of being

stagnant and unproductive. On the contrary, they were full of movement and growth,

and we owe to them a great many things[Pg 7] in our civilization which we should

never have derived from Greece and Rome. It is the purpose of the first nineteen

chapters of this manual to describe the effects of the barbarian conquests, the gradual

recovery of Europe from the disorder of the successive invasions, and the peculiar

institutions which grew up to meet the needs of the times. The remaining chapters will

attempt to show how mediæval institutions, habits, and ideas were supplanted, step by

step, by those which exist in Europe to-day.

[Pg 8]

THE ROMAN EMPIRE AT ITS GREATEST EXTENT

CHAPTER II

WESTERN EUROPE BEFORE THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS

Extent of the Roman Empire.

4. No one can hope to understand the Middle Ages who does not first learn

something of the Roman Empire, within whose bounds the Germans set up their

kingdoms and began the long task of creating modern Europe.

At the opening of the fifth century there were no separate, independent states in

western Europe such as we find on the map to-day. The whole territory now occupied

by England, France, Spain, and Italy formed at that time only a part of the vast realms

ruled over by the Roman emperor and his host of officials. As for Germany, it was

still a region of forests, familiar only to the barbarous and half-savage tribes who

inhabited them. The Romans tried in vain to conquer this part of Europe, and finally

had to content themselves with keeping the German hordes out of the Empire by

means of fortifications and guards along the Rhine and Danube rivers.